Speaker 1Shut up, and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, emcee, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you. Hey, rock stars.
Speaker 2It's your host, Reggie Dawson, and again, this is the Being On Stage podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. How do you rehearse? I mean it. How do you rehearse? Do you go full out every time? Do you take it easy some of the time? Do you just kind of rehearse in your head and then go out there and do it? How do you rehearse? Before we answer that question, before I go a little deeper, I'm going to ask you a favor. If you haven't done so already, please. Go to beingonstage.com, subscribe to the Rockstar Lounge. That way you get up-to-date tips and tools to help you improve your stage performance. And when you subscribe, you get a free copy of my book, Confidence On Stage. While you're there, if you also could head over to iTunes and drop a rating, a comment, and click subscribe while you're at it. That way you'll be sure to get the new episodes as soon as they come out, including episodes. Episode 50, which is where I will be discussing the secret of successful performing. So you definitely want to be subscribed to get that. Back to rehearsal. How do you rehearse for your performance? But one of the ways I know a lot of performers tend to rehearse is mental rehearsal. And while that is great in the brainstorming and the planning stages of what you're going to create to be on stage, it should and it actually has to go much deeper. Much deeper than mental rehearsal. Now mental rehearsal, that's where you listen to the music, you go through it in your head, you kind of create the vision. That's a mental rehearsal. There are people that can go on stage after just a mental rehearsal and slam dunk it. Those type of people are pretty rare. If you are that type of person, congratulations. If you're not that type of person, meaning after a mental rehearsal, you go out on stage and you're out of breath, you're winded, you lose it halfway through, you start doing repetitive movements or you kind of like you shrink down on stage into just a smaller little box that you're moving around in. All these things are a sign that you should have rehearsed a little bit better and a little more efficiently. So there's that word, efficiently. I'm going to talk about efficient and effective rehearsal in a minute. But the second type of rehearsal is where you kind of just go through the motions. Like you do the mental rehearsal, but then you also get up and you do some physical movement. So maybe you walk around a little bit, you bounce a little bit, and this is a lot of times how a lot of singers and rap artists and even musicians, how they rehearse, they kind of just go through the motions when they're rehearsing. The third style of rehearsal is that full out. Every time you step foot, even in your rehearsal space, you are 150% on point every time rehearsing as if you were performing. And that's all well and good. But if you do that every single time, you're going to lose it. If you do that every single time, you're going to find out that when you get on stage, you're going to get confused over what you should do. So I'm going to go over the most effective way that I've found to rehearse. I mentioned efficient and effective rehearsing. Now, ideally, you don't want to spend all day rehearsing. Now, in certain art forms, if you are at the point where this is your career, this is all you do is perform, then maybe you are at that point where you are rehearsing every day, but this is your job. Whereas I work eight hours a day, you've got to work eight hours a day. Or more as well. But most of us have jobs outside of performing, and that really, really restricts our time into rehearsal. So the importance of that efficient rehearsal, because efficient is all about time, effective is all about work. So that efficient is where we all get hung up because we think we have to spend hours and hours and hours rehearsing. And while I do believe that we should always go into a performance with at least three hours of rehearsal, under our belt, sometimes it can't happen. So how do you get more efficient with the time that you are spending rehearsing? That's where those three levels can really come in handy to kind of walk yourself through them. So efficiency is about saving yourself time. A big, big time saver is to spend some time in mental rehearsal, is to spend time in your mind kind of crafting what you want to see on stage. If you need to, you could even draw it out on a piece of paper. You could make a couple of different drawings for different points in the show. You could write it out on a list. I used to do that. I would write down a certain part in the music or a certain lyric that would trigger a movement that I want to do. So I would write it out a little bit if it was like a really choreographed show. I would have special names for this for certain movements. When I did choreography with a group of people, we had one dance move where we called the shoulder dip twirl. And that exactly how it sounds is exactly what happened. But you, you know, I would write that down on a piece of paper that this part we did the shoulder dip twirl. So however you have to create and plan that show, you have to spend time in that mental rehearsal. And like close your eyes, like really get into it. Picture what it's going to look like when you're out on stage. What is the audience going to see? So that's step one. So if you only have a few minutes of rehearsal, like if you only have a few minutes each day, I would spend at least 15 to 30 minutes in mental rehearsal. Okay. The next step is to go through the motions. Once you've crafted it. Once you've crafted what you want to see. And once you've kind of done a little list, you know, writing it out or drawing it out. And you have a good idea of what you want to do on stage. Then you want to spend another 15 to 30 minutes kind of going through the motions of where you're going to stand and what you're going to do. You don't have to go full out at this point. Just go through the motions. Breathe evenly. Don't overexert yourself. At this point, I highly recommend stretching after you reach. I'd spend like 15 minutes. Stretch the legs. Stretch the arms. The next point. Really spend about 15 minutes. And this is depending on the length of your show. Like my whole show lasts about 10 minutes. So I would say run through it two to three times. So each of these sections should be about a half hour, depending on the length of your show. In that all out rehearsal, that's when you need to press record and watch it and watch it afterwards so that you know what you're going to do. I would say watch it in between each time that you do your full out performance. But if that's not possible, if you're really short on time, at least watch the last one. So when I say full out rehearsal, I mean practice as if you are on stage. Now, that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But my belief is when you step on stage, you're at 150 percent. You are at high energy. Even if you're doing a slow song, your energy level needs to be high. That keeps your intensity. That keeps that emotional connection to your audience. Even when you're doing slow. You're doing slow stuff, but your energy needs to stay up. So when I say full out rehearsal, I mean full out as if you're on that stage trying to win over the audience and turn them into your fans. Full out like you are entertaining a crowd of a thousand people, that full out rehearsal that you do that that last 30 minutes of your rehearsal where you really go all out, that is the moment when you're going to realize what you're actually going to be able to accomplish on stage. You're going to realize what you're actually capable of doing. And I don't mean talent wise, I mean physically, like our bodies have certain limits that we just can't do. We can work at it, we can get there, but everyone has a certain limit that they just once you hit it, you hit it. So doing these full out rehearsals is going to teach you where you start to lose steam. Maybe you need to take it a little slower at the beginning so that you can amp it up a little more at the end. You have to be able to to recognize. When you're going to lose steam, when you're going to start slowing down, when you're going to start getting winded and that's where the full out rehearsals come in. So that's all about the efficiency and that's also highly effective because that three, those three or four one throughs that where you go full out like you're performing, those are the most effective rehearsals you're going to get. Some people have a very difficult time pretending like there's an audience. Well, if you need to get a real audience, you can, you can get a couple of your friends together. I mean, we used to go to a nightclub and do rehearsals on one of the off nights and it would just be a group of us that all perform together. So we'd act like each other's audience and that was a great way to get feedback and to brainstorm and to get help from one another. So if you need to gather a little bit of audience, gather some audience, but you've got to do some full out rehearsals that is going to be the most effective and crucial piece of your rehearsal plan. So the day of your show, I've done an episode before about establishing routine. I'm probably going to do another one because routine is everything the day of your show and leading up to your show. The day of your show, if you need to rehearse, do not do but maybe one full out rehearsal and plan it to where you're at least got three hours before you get on stage. You should not be doing full out rehearsals within 30 minutes of getting on stage because you're not going to be able to recuperate that energy and time. be able to recuperate the energy from your full-out rehearsal. So if you've got to do it, make sure you got a good time buffer. Depending on your level and how long you've been performing, if you're just starting out, I would say keep like a three-hour buffer. If you've been performing for a while, it's always a good idea to at least have an hour buffer that gives you time to relax and get some, you know, zen, I guess. It gives you time to relax before you have to go on stage, which is also a great idea. Plan time for relaxation. All right, I'm getting started into routine, and I'm not supposed to be doing this episode. This is about rehearsal. So if you have to rehearse the day of the show, keep it minimal, and you can do one run-through of each. One mental run-through, one half, well, I'll call it half-assed run-through, and one full-out run-through. That should do it for the day of the show. You really shouldn't be spending the day of the show rehearsing. By the time the day of the show gets there, you should be rehearsed. You should know your material. Now, if you're in a group of people, this whole rehearsal plan that I went over, it's kind of out the window. If you're in a group of people, you're probably going to have to rehearse more together. But if you're an individual planning an individual act, that's a real quick way to get through some rehearsal so you're at least prepared for your coming show. A lot of us, we have to practice our talent and our skill every single day to keep it fresh, and that's great. You should be doing that, but if that's not possible, and you have a show coming up, and you've got a busy week with the job and the kids and everything, you've got to at least get a good two hours in. You can break it up however you need to break it up, but you've got to go through those three steps of rehearsal. Rehearsal and practice for your performance is critical to success. Knowing what you're going to do on stage and having the plan of what it's going to look like on stage is powerful to your audience. The last thing you want when you get out there is to look like you have no idea where you're supposed to stand and where you're supposed to go. Get your rehearsal done. Get your rehearsal time in. No matter what you do on stage or how long you've been doing it, get some rehearsal time in. You need to have that rehearsal where you go full out. If nothing else, if you have no time to do anything else, at least have a rehearsal where you go full out. Don't hold back during your final rehearsal. Even if your first rehearsal is your final rehearsal, don't hold back. Give everything you have, and for the love of everything that is good, please avoid a rehearsal. On the day of the show, as much as possible. By that point, it should be more about the routine and getting mentally prepared rather than physically prepared. You got this, rock stars. Keep on shining.
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